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7/30/2019 Book Review by Pettit http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/book-review-by-pettit 1/4 Review: [untitled] Author(s): Joseph Pettit Reviewed work(s): Nature's Religion by Robert S. Corrington Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 149-151 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205683 Accessed: 24/05/2009 15:02 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The  Journal of Religion. http://www.jstor.org
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Page 1: Book Review by Pettit

7/30/2019 Book Review by Pettit

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/book-review-by-pettit 1/4

Review: [untitled]Author(s): Joseph PettitReviewed work(s):

Nature's Religion by Robert S. CorringtonSource: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 149-151Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205683

Accessed: 24/05/2009 15:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The

 Journal of Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

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Book Reviewsook Reviews

(p. 186), the history of scholasticism requires reflection on what it means to call adiscourse "scholastic" and on how we understand the relationships between spe-cific genres and scholastic discourse (p. 183).

Other essays in this collection, as well as that by Clooney just mentioned, re-spond to Cabezon's list of traits in another way, raising questions about the for-mation of scholastic dispositions and the contexts for their expression. Clooneysuggests a helpful distinction between "intellectualist" and "performative" scho-

lasticisms, according to which "the former are preponderantly focused on ques-tions of comprehensive understanding, the latter on formation in right thinkingand acting" (p. 187). This contrast offers a new perspective on pedagogicalchoices and genre emphases.

In his account of Rabbinic scholasticism, Michael D. Swartz argues that "to beinterested in the idea of scholasticism is to be interested in the living context of

learning" (p. 93). This is clearly the case in Robert Goss's engaging discussion ofChristian-Buddhist scholastic apologetics in eighteenth-century Tibet. DescribingIppolito Desideri's preparation to engage Buddhist scholastics, Goss argues thatthis Jesuit modified his own doctrinal language and scholastic method, creatinga new "interpretive medium" (p. 82). A concern with the interaction of devotion,

study, and pedagogy is visible in Paul Griffiths's discussion of an ideal-typicalscholasticism (p. 202), in which the practices of reading and composition arelinked to particular epistemological commitments and institutional contexts

(pp. 208-28). His attention to educational institutions sits well with Daniel Madi-

gan's lucid discussion of speculative theology and legal scholasticism in Islam.

There the importance of the "guild-school aspect of scholasticism" (p. 56) is em-phasized as the mechanism through which orthodoxy is delineated and its trans-mission assured. Cabez6n tantalizingly suggests a relationship of reflection and

recapitulation between ideology and material production (p. 142), which deservesfuller elaboration.ANNE M. BLACKBURN,University of South Carolina.

CORRINGTON, ROBERTS. Nature's Religion. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,1997. xv+192 pp. $58.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

In NaturesReligion,Robert S. Corrington sets for himself a daunting task: to char-acterize the origins of becoming and the possibilities for continuity in nature andin human existence. He does this through a sustained consideration of the selfthat is impressive in both its speculative scope and its systematic structure. Cor-

rington delves into the "great between that underlies the self and the folds ofnature" (p. 38). Corrington is especially helpful in his insistence that philosophymove beyond the semiotically explicit and explore more thoroughly the semiosisof the unconscious. Exploring this unconscious and its manifold eruptions, Cor-

rington is to be applauded for his effort to provide a map of this unruly domain.Insofar as Corrington's book offers an account of the semiotic self that is more

exact than others, it is of obvious importance. But whether or not it does this isfor others more versed in semiotics than I to decide. However, this is also a bookabout philosophy and philosophical theology, and on these matters, I will sounda few critical notes.

At the heart of Corrington's project is the ontological difference between nature

naturing and nature natured. Owing an acknowledged debt to Martin Heidegger,

(p. 186), the history of scholasticism requires reflection on what it means to call adiscourse "scholastic" and on how we understand the relationships between spe-cific genres and scholastic discourse (p. 183).

Other essays in this collection, as well as that by Clooney just mentioned, re-spond to Cabezon's list of traits in another way, raising questions about the for-mation of scholastic dispositions and the contexts for their expression. Clooneysuggests a helpful distinction between "intellectualist" and "performative" scho-

lasticisms, according to which "the former are preponderantly focused on ques-tions of comprehensive understanding, the latter on formation in right thinkingand acting" (p. 187). This contrast offers a new perspective on pedagogicalchoices and genre emphases.

In his account of Rabbinic scholasticism, Michael D. Swartz argues that "to beinterested in the idea of scholasticism is to be interested in the living context of

learning" (p. 93). This is clearly the case in Robert Goss's engaging discussion ofChristian-Buddhist scholastic apologetics in eighteenth-century Tibet. DescribingIppolito Desideri's preparation to engage Buddhist scholastics, Goss argues thatthis Jesuit modified his own doctrinal language and scholastic method, creatinga new "interpretive medium" (p. 82). A concern with the interaction of devotion,

study, and pedagogy is visible in Paul Griffiths's discussion of an ideal-typicalscholasticism (p. 202), in which the practices of reading and composition arelinked to particular epistemological commitments and institutional contexts

(pp. 208-28). His attention to educational institutions sits well with Daniel Madi-

gan's lucid discussion of speculative theology and legal scholasticism in Islam.

There the importance of the "guild-school aspect of scholasticism" (p. 56) is em-phasized as the mechanism through which orthodoxy is delineated and its trans-mission assured. Cabez6n tantalizingly suggests a relationship of reflection and

recapitulation between ideology and material production (p. 142), which deservesfuller elaboration.ANNE M. BLACKBURN,University of South Carolina.

CORRINGTON, ROBERTS. Nature's Religion. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield,1997. xv+192 pp. $58.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

In NaturesReligion,Robert S. Corrington sets for himself a daunting task: to char-acterize the origins of becoming and the possibilities for continuity in nature andin human existence. He does this through a sustained consideration of the selfthat is impressive in both its speculative scope and its systematic structure. Cor-

rington delves into the "great between that underlies the self and the folds ofnature" (p. 38). Corrington is especially helpful in his insistence that philosophymove beyond the semiotically explicit and explore more thoroughly the semiosisof the unconscious. Exploring this unconscious and its manifold eruptions, Cor-

rington is to be applauded for his effort to provide a map of this unruly domain.Insofar as Corrington's book offers an account of the semiotic self that is more

exact than others, it is of obvious importance. But whether or not it does this isfor others more versed in semiotics than I to decide. However, this is also a bookabout philosophy and philosophical theology, and on these matters, I will sounda few critical notes.

At the heart of Corrington's project is the ontological difference between nature

naturing and nature natured. Owing an acknowledged debt to Martin Heidegger,

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The Journal of Religion

Corrington identifies ontological difference as "the fissure between the potenciesand the orders of the world," a fissure that "enters into our awareness throughthe unconscious" (p. 4). It is ontological difference that makes experience of

the sacred, of nature's religion, possible. Nature naturing is an "unruly ground"from which semiosis emerges through the ongoing interplay between what Cor-

rington calls "intervals" and "sacred folds." I leave it to the reader to unpack these

novel, but sometimes opaque, categories. Whatever insight one can gather fromthese concepts, their success rests on the coherence of appeals to ontological dif-

ference, and it is not at all clear that such coherence is forthcoming in Corring-ton's text.

Corrington makes at least two strong claims about ontological difference. First,he contends that "anyphilosophical theology that does not start and end with the

ontological difference will fail to understand anything of the complex where of

the sacred within nature itself" (p. 7). Second, having insisted that ontologicaldifference is the sine qua non of philosophical theology, Corrington places somerather significant brakes on any race to evaluate this first claim with critical rigor.Reason, the agent of critical evaluation, proves impotent with respect to consider-

ing the unruly ground on the one side of the ontological difference. Reason "is a

dependent product of the unruly ground, and cannot as a product, gain accessto its indefinite and unconditional source" (p. 100). Corrington recognizes thatthis appeal to the "irrational ground of the world" (p. 15) might cause one todoubt the possibility of success in a project that relies so heavily on the existenceof something that, in itself, we cannot understand (see pp. 100-101). It is impor-

tant that Corrington offer a way out of this difficulty, for if he cannot, he will haveleft us with no reason for concluding that philosophical theology should affirm

ontological difference in the first place.Corrington's proposed solution is a phenomenological appeal to the semiotic

effects present in nature and the self. This is a strategy that many Thomists willbe familiar with: seek to explain that about which in itself we can know nothingin terms of its effects. But this is a very controversial strategy, for it presupposes,at least at the philosophical level, that we have good reasons to believe that theeffects we phenomenologically isolate are indeed effects of that which cannot be

known, in this case, of unruly ground. Corrington never really provides, or atleast clarifies, these

goodreasons. If, then, a rival account of these effects is avail-

able, one that can identify a relation between cause and effect that is open tocritical evaluation, anyone who does not wish to leave critical thought behind has

good reason to accept this alternative account instead of Corrington's. One wouldalso have reason to doubt Corrington's criticisms of rival philosophical theologies,such as the one he levels against the writings of Charles Hartshorne, so long asthese critiques rest on a contention that these philosophies have failed to recog-nize the significance of ontological difference.

Hartshorne's own principle of contrast, in fact, provides good reason to con-clude that any appeal to things like an unknowable unruly ground is always amistake. According to this principle, understanding is fundamentally differentia-

tion, and so it requires at least enough positive predication to make differentia-tion possible. Yet, Corrington asks us to understand, or at least believe that heunderstands, something that explicitly resists consideration in terms of such

predication. Differentiation of the irrational, or nonrational, from the rational,and this is what I think the difference between nature naturing and nature na-tured amounts to, will not do if the former is indistinguishable from nothing sincesuch a differentiation is indistinguishable from no differentiation at all. Corring-

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Book Reviewsook Reviews

ton boldlydeclaresthat"nothingnesss an enablingground"(p. 15),but this is ause of wordsimperviousto criticalconsideration.Where there is no differentia-tion, there is no understanding.

It willnot do for Corrington o counter that the possibilityof metaphysics,ofnaturenatured, ncludingHartshorne'smetaphysics,mustitselfbe explained,forthis simplybegs the metaphysicalquestion.Corringtonhas offered us no reasonto think thatthere is anythingpriorto metaphysics ecause the ontologicaldiffer-ence thatsupposedly ndicatesan unruly ground priorto metaphysicss a differ-ence of dubiousphilosophicalvalue.JOSEPH ETTIT,Chicago,Illinois.

WIEBE,DONALD.ThePoliticsofReligious tudies:TheContinuingConflictwithTheology

in theAcademy. ew York:St. Martin'sPress, 1999.xx+332 pp. $49.95 (cloth).

In this collection of essays,Donald Wiebearguesthat theological agendascon-tinue to interferewith the scientific tudyof religionandhavekept religiousstud-ies frombecominga legitimateacademicdiscipline.Sometimesthis interferencecomes fromthose witha particular eligiousagenda,what Wiebecalls"'capital-c'confessionaltheology."Moreoften, however, he problemcomes fromputativelysecularacademicswhose methodologicalassumptionscontradict he distinctionbetween teaching religion and teaching about religion on which the field isfounded. That is, theirscholarshipand teaching maynot promotethe teachings

of a particularreligion,but they do promotethe idea thatreligion"ingeneral" sgood, or at leastthatit is not to be criticized,an ideaWiebecalls"small-c'onfes-sionaltheology."This kind of tolerant,relativisticassumptionrecallsDwightEi-senhower's tatement that whatpeople need is a deeply held faith-and it doesnot matter which one. The most importantcontributionof these essaysis thatthey show howprevalentand howcompromisingo academicstandards hispro-religious assumption is.

As a philosopherof religionconcerned with unexaminedtheologicalassump-tions in my own subfield of religiousstudies,I read Wiebe'sjeremiadsand casestudies withsympathy. n the end, though, I found his solutionthat the studyof

religionbe restricted o what he

calls the naturalisticparadigm o be too narrow.Two issuesarecentral.The firstissue has to do withwhether or not scholarsshouldbracketexplana-

tions of religiousphenomenain order to understandthem in theirown terms. Iampersuadedbywhatsome havecalled the "LogicalConnectionArgument"hathumanbehavior s constituted n part by the intentionsof the agent, so therecanbe no identificationof an action as the action it is withoutreference to the insid-er'spoint of view.Wiebeargues,in my opinion rightly, hatif one combinesthisphenomenologicalgoal of understandingreligionwiththe exclusion of explana-tion-perhaps on the groundsthatreligionis sui generisand therefore nacces-sible to "outsiders"-then one has taken an antiacademicand

implicitlyproreli-gious commitment.Religiousphenomenaare not immune to sociologicalandpsychological xplanations.Nevertheless, he insider's iew andthe methodologi-calprocedureof bracketingare crucialfirststepsin the identificationof religiousbeliefs so that the academicstudyof religionhas data toworkwith.Consequently,there is a place in religiousstudies for phenomenology,and Wiebe's tatementsthat"the'insider'approach n ReligiousStudies s not acceptable o the academy"(p. 7), thatbracketing mpliestheologicalcommitment(p. 146),or that the only

ton boldlydeclaresthat"nothingnesss an enablingground"(p. 15),but this is ause of wordsimperviousto criticalconsideration.Where there is no differentia-tion, there is no understanding.

It willnot do for Corrington o counter that the possibilityof metaphysics,ofnaturenatured, ncludingHartshorne'smetaphysics,mustitselfbe explained,forthis simplybegs the metaphysicalquestion.Corringtonhas offered us no reasonto think thatthere is anythingpriorto metaphysics ecause the ontologicaldiffer-ence thatsupposedly ndicatesan unruly ground priorto metaphysicss a differ-ence of dubiousphilosophicalvalue.JOSEPH ETTIT,Chicago,Illinois.

WIEBE,DONALD.ThePoliticsofReligious tudies:TheContinuingConflictwithTheology

in theAcademy. ew York:St. Martin'sPress, 1999.xx+332 pp. $49.95 (cloth).

In this collection of essays,Donald Wiebearguesthat theological agendascon-tinue to interferewith the scientific tudyof religionandhavekept religiousstud-ies frombecominga legitimateacademicdiscipline.Sometimesthis interferencecomes fromthose witha particular eligiousagenda,what Wiebecalls"'capital-c'confessionaltheology."Moreoften, however, he problemcomes fromputativelysecularacademicswhose methodologicalassumptionscontradict he distinctionbetween teaching religion and teaching about religion on which the field isfounded. That is, theirscholarshipand teaching maynot promotethe teachings

of a particularreligion,but they do promotethe idea thatreligion"ingeneral" sgood, or at leastthatit is not to be criticized,an ideaWiebecalls"small-c'onfes-sionaltheology."This kind of tolerant,relativisticassumptionrecallsDwightEi-senhower's tatement that whatpeople need is a deeply held faith-and it doesnot matter which one. The most importantcontributionof these essaysis thatthey show howprevalentand howcompromisingo academicstandards hispro-religious assumption is.

As a philosopherof religionconcerned with unexaminedtheologicalassump-tions in my own subfield of religiousstudies,I read Wiebe'sjeremiadsand casestudies withsympathy. n the end, though, I found his solutionthat the studyof

religionbe restricted o what he

calls the naturalisticparadigm o be too narrow.Two issuesarecentral.The firstissue has to do withwhether or not scholarsshouldbracketexplana-

tions of religiousphenomenain order to understandthem in theirown terms. Iampersuadedbywhatsome havecalled the "LogicalConnectionArgument"hathumanbehavior s constituted n part by the intentionsof the agent, so therecanbe no identificationof an action as the action it is withoutreference to the insid-er'spoint of view.Wiebeargues,in my opinion rightly, hatif one combinesthisphenomenologicalgoal of understandingreligionwiththe exclusion of explana-tion-perhaps on the groundsthatreligionis sui generisand therefore nacces-sible to "outsiders"-then one has taken an antiacademicand

implicitlyproreli-gious commitment.Religiousphenomenaare not immune to sociologicalandpsychological xplanations.Nevertheless, he insider's iew andthe methodologi-calprocedureof bracketingare crucialfirststepsin the identificationof religiousbeliefs so that the academicstudyof religionhas data toworkwith.Consequently,there is a place in religiousstudies for phenomenology,and Wiebe's tatementsthat"the'insider'approach n ReligiousStudies s not acceptable o the academy"(p. 7), thatbracketing mpliestheologicalcommitment(p. 146),or that the only

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